incapacity of
rulers whose administration was a tissue, not merely of crimes, but of
blunders.

We have not time to tell how the leaders of the savage faction at length
began to avenge mankind on each other: how the craven Hebert was dragged
wailing and trembling to his doom; how the nobler Danton, moved by a
late repentance, strove in vain to repair the evil which he had wrought,
and half redeemed the great crime of September by man fully encountering
death in the cause of mercy.

Our business is with Barere. In all those things he was not only
consenting, but eagerly and joyously forward. Not merely was he one
of the guilty administration. He was the man to whom was especially
assigned the office of proposing and defending outrages on justice and
humanity, and of furnishing to atrocious schemes an appropriate garb of
atrocious rodomontade. Barere first proclaimed from the tribune of the
Convention that terror must be the order of the day. It was by Barere
that the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris was provided with the aid of a
public accuser worthy of such a court, the infamous Fouquier Tinville.
It was Barere who, when one of the old members of the National Assembly
had been absolved by the Revolutionary Tribunal, gave orders that a
fresh jury should be summoned. "Acquit one of the National Assembly!"
he cried. "The Tribunal is turning against the Revolution." It is
unnecessary to say that the prisoner's head was soon in the basket. It
was Barere who moved that the city of Lyons should be destroyed. "Let
the plough," he cried from the tribune, "pass over her. Let her name
cease to exist. The rebels are conquered; but are they all exterminated?
No weakness. No mercy. Let every one be smitten. Two words will suffice
to tell the whole. Lyons made war on liberty; Lyons is no more."
When Toulon was taken Barere came forward to announce the event. "The
conquest," said the apostate Brissotine, "won by the Mountain over the
Brissotines must be commemorated by a mark set on the place where Toulon
once stood." The national thunder must crush the house of every trader
in the town. When Camille Desmoulins, long distinguished among the
republicans by zeal and ability, dared to raise his eloquent voice
against the Reign of Terror, and to point out the close analogy between
the government which then oppressed France and the government of the
worst of the Caesars, Barere rose to complain of the weak compassion
which tried to reviv